Garrus versus Garrus
by thebluninja
Summary: Master thief versus vigilante cop - who will win? Kasumi brings Vakarian a copy of the new game, "Thief: Reliquary" and challenges his abilities as a detective.
1. Tutorial

Garrus smirked, listening to the tinny bleep of his omni-tool. He was down in the guts of the forward battery, completely out of sight of the door, and he's just foisted Shepard off with the reliable "Calibrations are running!" excuse. He twisted his fingers, making the hologram dance, and spread his mandibles wide in triumph.

"That looks like a new high score," came a female voice from above him, and he panicked before his brain caught up and identified it as Kasumi. The lithe thief turned off her cloak, returning to visibility with that odd fizzing sound. "Haven't you gotten bored with that one yet?"

"Kasumi Goto, next time you sneak up on me like that, I'm going to shoot you on general principles," he growled, deactivating his omni-tool. Part of him was pissed off at his own carelessness in not checking the room better after Shepard left. The rest of him was dreading what kind of demands she was going to extort from him to keep it a secret. "What do you want?"

"Nothing much. I just got a new game that I knew you'd love to try. Though it might be a little too complicated for your tastes." _I get it now,_ he thought, _she thinks she can beat me at this game._ "I sent a copy to your tool just now. I also gave copies to Mordin, Jacob, Kelly, and the engineering duo." She grinned that annoyingly cheerful grin, and strolled back down the length of the gun. "I'm on my way to tell the rest of them now, but I wanted you to get a head start."

He frowned at that thought. _What other game is she playing with this?_ He thought frantically. "Why's that?"

She paused at the door, lifting the cowl just enough to see the glint in her eyes. "Oh, just run through the tutorial, and you'll see. We'll work out when to run the actual game once everyone has had a chance to get used to the style." With those cryptic words, she vanished from sight again, the door swishing closed. Not satisfied, Garrus made sure to sweep the battery twice before settling back to try the game.

The title seemed ominous enough – _Thief: Reliquary_, it was named, which made him think of those strange games advertised on the Citadel, like _Galaxy of Fantasy_. Still, he was starting to get tired of _Home Hackers 3_ and _STG Ops: Tuchanka_ and _Batarian Crime Lords_. At least he could play off the hacking game as keeping his skills sharp if Shepard did catch him playing games.

With only a minor twinge of misgiving, he started up the game. The hologram of his omni-tool flickered as the game adjusted settings to match his not-quite top of the line tool. _Visor detected; utilize additional ocular output? Y/N_ and he selected yes. A moment later, the hologram had shifted, moving into his visor and projecting the game imagery over both eyes.

The starting menu was a pre-flight city, somewhere after the rise of machinery but before the discovery of pollution measures. At the same time, there were flickering lights free of any power source, and the woodlands outside the city were filled with non-human creatures, a whole walled-off section of the city was filled with _walking corpses_, and uniformed people armed with a mixture of giant hammers and crossbows guarded large, gaudy temples.

The "Play Game" option was currently inaccessible due to "No server found," and he wondered how long it would take Mordin to convince EDI to set one up for them. There were two tutorials listed, one for "Thief" and one for "Guards." Sure he knew what Kasumi wanted him to do, he selected the thief option. The hologram cleared for a moment, then switched to a movie.

A cloaked man walked through a crowded street just after dawn, and in his wake came angry shouts. The camera closed in on his hand as he swiped a coin purse, then a gold comb from a pocket, their owners blissfully unaware until the man was several paces away and out of sight. The camera zoomed out, showing the tangle of the city until it was lost to smog. The next scene showed him opening a trapdoor, boosting himself up and looking around at several filthy children on the brink of starvation.

"Garrus," one of the children said, and the turian nearly jumped in spite of himself. Damn, this game was thorough! "The guards caught Alea. They turned her over to the Hammers." The thief paused, setting down a bag full of food, and simply nodded, eyes glinting, one green and one copper.

The scene changed again, showing the cloaked man perched on a rooftop, looking into the compound surrounding one of the smaller temples. Men and women wearing the deep red and carrying hammers walked through the compound, and sitting at a table, watched over by stern guards, were a dozen street children, being put through forced labor. "I'm Garrus," the man narrated, and Vakarian had a moment of feeling rather dumb. _I get it, she finds a game where the main character is a criminal with my name. I'll show her._ "Master thief, savior of the city, and last of the Keepers. The glyph magic still works for me, but I can't teach it to the children who show talent while they're still starving. Picking pockets for your daily bread is a dangerous occupation.

"There's no love lost between me and the Hammerites, especially when they go bribing the City Watch for expendable child labor. I'm sure they're sincere about _saving_ the children who all seem to end up burned, maimed, or dead in their forges." While he narrated, the camera flicked through images of children scarred by horrible injuries, and the turian found he was grinding his mandibles in anger. _Ok, maybe I will like this game_. "Might as well make this little rescue count. A temple like this must have enough loot to pay my rent for the next month."

The tutorial started simply enough, teaching Garrus how to use the thief's primary weapons: dagger, blackjack, arrows both normal and water (which he found incredibly odd, but chalked it up to the strange setting of the game, especially when it mentioned _air crystals_, something sure to give the scientific Mordin apoplexy), flashbangs, and most importantly, how to move silently and unseen. Overall, it only took him about half an hour to go through the temple, bludgeon every single Hammer into unconsciousness, and carry all of the sleeping children outside to safety.

Checking his objectives, he was proud to see his score rated as _Expert_. "Damn right I am," he said, finally saving and exiting the game. This little game showed promise, after all. He wondered how the "Guard" tutorial went, but he could already guess how the game went – probably multiple people logged in, choosing to either play as a thief or a guard, and then worked to thwart the other side.

Keying up the communication, he paged Mordin. "Question?"

"Kasumi bring you the game?" he asked.

"Yes. Interesting world, juxtaposition of magic and science, both in opposition and harmony. Exploration of right versus law, allows exploring both paths. Look forward to playing against you." Mordin was, as usual, more rapid firing than an Avenger.

"I only went through the Thief part so far," he admitted. "I'm trying to decide whether to like the guy for stealing my name as well as everything that wasn't nailed down."

"Possible to steal more. Game bugs on extranet, can steal furniture, decorations, even walls." The turian blinked at the thought of the slender, cloaked thief ripping a wall off the house and stuffing it into his loot pouch. "Server access already done. Can play when everyone is done with tutorial." He cut off the signal without so much as a farewell, not that it surprised Garrus much.

"Huh." He glanced at the omni-tool, tempted to just jump right into the guard tutorial and see about pitting himself against the scientist, but the rumble of his stomach convinced him to at least eat lunch first.


	2. Shalebridge Storage

To his surprise, Kasumi appeared in the mess hall for lunch as well. "What did you think?" she asked as he poked at his rations. _Reconstituted dried food again, yay,_ he thought, grimly taking a bite. "Like the game?"

Garrus glanced nervously around the mess hall before answering, making sure that Shepard and Miranda weren't within hearing. "It's a nice change of pace. Reminds me of some of the things I did as Archangel." Trying to keep up his appetite, he took another bite, then scanned the tables to see where the bottles of dextro spices had gone. "This food tastes like wet cardboard," he muttered. "How'd you find a game with my name, anyway?"

"The game maker made a mistake. Some college kid from Earth, scanning all these old games from two centuries ago – only the copy he had wasn't high quality audio." She smirked. "After he published it, some college professor with a degree in early electronics reams him out for all the things he garbled."

He pointed the fork at her, which would have been more menacing if there hadn't been a vegetable chunk on the end of it. "Just for that, I'm going to run through the guard section soon as I'm done, and catch that thief."

"The proper term is 'taffer', if you weren't paying attention," Donnelly said, sitting down next to Kasumi. "This game looks to be quite exciting. Gabby and I already set it up to play on our terminals."

"Just don't let Shepard catch you," the thief warned. "You know how he tends to roam around the ship to snoop on everyone."

"Don't worry, we got it covered," Daniels said, sitting across from her partner, bumping into Garrus lightly. "Besides, I think between the three of us, we can take this little pickpocket."

"You might be the pickpocket," Kasumi retorted. "Each level, the game picks the thief completely randomly. So no cheating," she admonished the engineers, "no screen peeking if one of you ends up as Garrus." The turian made the throat-clearing noise that humans used. "You know what I mean," she added crossly.

As she started to rise, Jack suddenly came up on her other side, pushing her back onto the bench with the hand not holding her tray. "Not so fast, I want to know what this game is." She gestured at the engineering duo. "I've been listening to these punks talk about it for the last hour. I want in."

The rest of the group exchanged worried glances, but Kasumi nodded. "Alright, I'll send you a copy of the game too. We're going to try a game this afternoon once Garrus, Jacob, and Kelly finish the tutorial missions." Shaking off the tattooed hand, she rose to her feet again, activating her cloak and leaving the dirty tray on the counter.

Garrus looked down at his tray. _Three bites is enough to hold me until dinner, right?_ His already rebelling stomach agreed, and he dumped the rest of the food into the recycler. In a fast walk, he strode back into the forward battery, into his favorite hiding spot, and activated the game again. It registered the game server now, with one player waiting. _Probably Mordin, the overachiever_, he speculated, then activated the other tutorial.

Much of it was the same, such as the commands for weapons. The audio clues he found were far more important as a guard, and while the game didn't point out obvious things like missing loot or doors left mysteriously open, he followed those pretty quickly by himself, and caught the thief in a good, but not expert, time. The gameplay option he found most interesting was the ability to talk to the other guards – but only using fixed commands. That way, the multiple real people couldn't distinguish each other from the VI-controlled guards, since they could send the exact same commands. The conversations he could get into with other guards were pretty good, though he didn't understand why a closing bear pit was a bad thing.

When he finished, the menu now read three players waiting, so he logged in as well, noting Mordin, Kasumi, and Jacob. Figuring it was going to take a while, he set the game to alert him when it was ready to go, and went back to the weapons console. Might as well get the cannon ready while he was waiting.

Two hours later, the game gave him a notification. The game was full, with all eight of them logged in. Shepard had taken Zaeed and Miranda to some junk planet to recruit a krogan, so they had at least an hour, maybe two. The game's VI cleared the screen, and brought up a movie, which started with a little animated sword-and-eagle combo – the symbol of the City Watch. _Guess I'm a guard, then. Works for me._

He watched the explanation video, about watch patrols in a neighborhood called Shalebridge being increased due to some wealthy merchant slipping bribes to protect his merchandise. It all seemed simple enough, and along with the other two dozen guards, he left the watch house to patrol the streets. He had ended up with a crossbow-wielding guard, which suited him, and he quickly commanded one of the sword guards to partner up with him.

To start with, he circled the warehouse holding the goods. It shared one wall with a house, and the roofs were close enough together for an enterprising thief to jump them – which was probably the point, from the tutorial. He explored through all the houses that weren't locked, making a mental note of which ones were. In one of them, he got a scheming idea. _So the thief needs to take all the loot. What happens if I move it?_

Giving it a try, he walked up to the glinting candlestick and tried to pick it up, only to completely fail to do anything but knock it off the mantle. He tried to pick it up off the floor, only to have it literally fly out of his fingers and get wedged underneath the bookshelf in the corner. _Damn it, they thought of that too._ Shrugging, he left it stuck where it was, and continued his rounds.

It was half an hour in that he found two of the guards, knocked unconscious and dumped in a dark corner under a bush. He flipped through the dialog options, shouting out a warning to all the guards in the vicinity. Of course, whoever was playing was either good enough to have left the area, or was smart enough not to come out due to his taunts. Still, he ran around, checking all the locked doors, until he found one unlocked.

He directed his sword-wielding partner to storm in first, his own crossbow at the ready. They searched the little house quickly, finding a window open upstairs. Annoyingly, "He's on the rooftops!" wasn't a valid dialog option, so he had to settle for, "Where did he go?" shouted out the open window. Hopefully his fellow guards were bright enough to follow that, since there was no way he could make the jump to the opposite roof.

Hearing a thump behind him, Garrus whirled around, only to find that whoever was playing the thief hadn't actually left. And had just succeeded in taking out his partner. He loosed the crossbow, hitting the game-Garrus solidly in the torso. Which, of course, didn't take him down, but rather send him dashing forward swinging a dagger madly. He tried to use the crossbow to defend himself, but blocking the dagger with an unwieldy wooden contraption was harder than it looked. Noticing he was down to half health already, he abandoned his defense, reloading faster than a crossbow had any right to, and shooting the thief squarely in the chest again before a last dagger strike sent him crashing to the floor.

His camera view hovered over the dead guard, and Garrus was momentarily surprised to find he'd spent the last forty minutes running around as a human female. Then, to his surprise, the game popped up a prompt: _Respawn in new guard? Y/N_ It didn't take him long at all to hit yes – he wasn't sure who was controlling this thief, but by the spirits, he was going to take them _down_!

This time he was in one of the sword guards, inside the warehouse. Two other sword guards were with him, moving in a fairly competent chevron formation. _One of these has got to be Jacob,_ he thought, but paid attention to the surroundings. He hadn't come inside earlier on the level, so the stacks of crates, with their overabundance of shadowed nooks, was a new and hostile area. Still, whoever was playing thief-Garrus wasn't in here yet.

He paid special attention to the various skylights, and when one of them was open, he pointed his sword at it, not even trying to mess with the dialog options. The other guard promptly put his back to a wall, while the third proceeded to run around shouting. _I can't tell if that's the VI, or Jack,_ he marveled. He moved off a short distance from guard-Jacob, scanning the shadows for movement and opened containers. Which was what saved him as an arrow took out the shouting guard of their trio, since he could trace the shooting position.

Blocked from direct sight, he ran around the corner, going up a convenient staircase-like section of crates, and there was the thief, shooting broadhead arrows at guard-Jacob, who was valiantly dodging them while obviously stumped how to reach his attacker. Garrus, of course, didn't have that problem, and promptly ran the thief through the heart.

The camera backed off to what he guessed was a universal feed, showing his guard standing over the fallen opponent. Scores for the guard players seemed based on how long they survived and how much damage they had dealt, and his bonus for making the kill was enough to put him comfortably in the lead despite his death.

Dinner in the mess hall was a curious affair. All of the game players had rather quickly gathered at one table, ejecting Hadley, and a frustrated Kelly was the last to arrive. "You? _You_ were the thief?" Jack chortled. "Damn, now I don't feel so bad about spending an hour walking around in circles."

"You were much better than I expected," Garrus told her, picking at his food. "I figured two crossbow bolts to the chest would stop you."

"I just wish I had some mobility as a guard," Jacob complained. "All I did was get shot at until someone else snuck up behind her." Garrus raised his fork again, receiving a nod of respect from Mordin and Kasumi and quiet golf claps from the engineers.

"Yeah, yeah, rub it in," Kelly groused. "Wait until _you're_ the thief and it's you alone against thirty armed guards."

"Look forward to the challenge," Mordin said. "Like STG missions, without chance of immediate and painful death." This remark was met by a moment of silence.

"Well, should we plan for tomorrow morning? Minus whoever's going down to Haestrom with Shepard," Kasumi said. "Everyone agreed? Good. There's fifteen missions in the storyline, and it continues whether you won or lost if you have the same players."

"I can't wait to be the little sneaky bastard," Jack said. "I will totally rip all of you a new one."

"Right," Garrus drawled doubtfully. "We'll see about that."

Mostly finished with their food, the group broke up for the night.


	3. Cubic Art

Shepard went to Haestrom with Grunt and Miranda, so the moment they were in the elevator, all eight people were logged in. Garrus watched the names as they lit up, and when everyone was ready, it started. To his surprise, he ended up as the thief this time. According to the video, one of the noblemen was putting on an art show at a ritzy inn on the edge of town. The streets were well guarded, but he should be able to get in through the lightly wooded area behind the inn – if he could avoid the burricks. The picture of an ungainly reptile-like creature belching green gas disgusted him; it reminded him of the potatos he'd seen Gardner making up for the rest of the crew.

He started in a building also on the edge of the City, the neighborhood outside the protective walls high above. There were of course guards in the street, along with civilians, and he took the opportunity to remove a couple of them with the blackjack before scaling a house, to jump on another house, to get over the smaller walls and into the forest.

The burricks were quite audible to him, but avoiding them was harder than it seemed. While picking up a moss crystal (a thought which made his fringe hurt thinking about it), one of them had seen him, and now tracked him tenaciously across the whole wood. He'd managed to lose it long enough to hide next to one of the windows into the inn cellar, but the damnable thing wouldn't just give up and leave.

Guards were inside, and outside, and a pair of them just walked between him and the burrick, giving him an idea. It all hinged on whether or not the VI treated the guards and the reptiles as "allies" or accounted for friendly fire. He ran out, smacking the bow guard before she could react, and led the swordsman right into the woods, right past the burrick. As it huffed out the cloud of toxic gas, he was out of reach and the chasing guard was perfectly in position.

He wasn't sure if the guard was VI or a player, but they immediately turned around and attacked the burrick. Which bellowed in rage, bringing more of them in to join the party. Shouts from the dying guard brought more of his brethren to join in the action.

While this was going on, Garrus snuck around, climbed into the yard of one of the other houses, paused long enough to loot some sparkling wine bottles, and then stroll quite calmly in the front door of the inn. Quietly, of course; no matter the casualties, he was fairly sure that Mordin and Kasumi wouldn't be drawn off, and with enough bow guards, the burricks would probably lose anyway.

He spent the next hour crawling around the inn, stripping paintings, lifting candlesticks, and knocking out two more guards after choking them with moss arrows. Finally, he had only the main gallery left to raid. He'd found half the loot in the level already, so it was either in there or concealed in random places around the mission, and he didn't have the patience to go spend another hour trying to hunt it down.

From the roof of the inn (and wasn't _that_ a pain to get up onto) he could see the carnage of a half dozen burricks and five guards, before he crawled in through a vent cover into the rafters. His mandibles fluttered in nervousness as he scanned the room below.

It was set up in cubicles, sort of, with painting and sculptures displayed. Two guards stood by both of the doors into the room, and eight more patrolled the room in pairs. He could get a good chunk of the loot in here, but staying alive long enough to get all of it and get _out_ again, he just didn't see a way.

He sat in the rafters for a good two minutes, watching the patrol, before ghosting across the rafters over one cubicle. Their patrols were good, but they never looked in that one. Carefully, he shot a moss arrow onto the floor before dropping silently. Two paintings went into his loot pouch, and he listened closely, but there were no signs of alarm yet.

Timing the motions, he managed to get into two more cubicles to snag another five paintings, before one of the guard pairs let out the alarm. He reacted quickly, leaping over the wall to another cube, grabbing the loot, and leaping again as the guards rushed around into that one. This time, on his way over, he took an arrow to the back, and he winced as he saw nearly half of his health vanish. _Kelly was nuts to fight me!_ He thought in a panic, then pulled out a flashbang with one hand as he stowed two sculptures.

Rushing out of the cubicle, he tossed both of his two flashbangs, circled the pair by the door, and fled the room. He made a mad dash out of the inn, checking his loot percentage on the way. _Seventy-five percent is enough to complete my objective_, he thought, _and I only have to make it one more block to beat the level before they catch me._

So caught up was he in watching for pursuit, that he didn't see the watchman standing in the street in front of his finish point. Two whacks of the sword, done almost before he knew he was even under attack, and the mission ended. "Twenty feet?" Garrus whispered to himself.

A moment later, he stormed out of the forward battery. "_Twenty feet?_" he shouted angrily. "Twenty feet and I would have beat the mission!"

* * *

Dinner that night was slightly more strained than the night before. Tali's being on the ship was a bright spot, of course, but Garrus wanted nothing more than to punch Jacob in his smug little face. "You'll get yours," he said menacingly, but the biotic merely smirked and continued eating his "Swedish meatballs" (despite everyone else pushing their trays away after the first bite).


	4. Prison Break

Shepard had just left, taking Zaeed and Miranda down to some human colony in the ass-end of space, when the doors to the battery opened. _I'm going to kill whoever it is for their horrible sense of timing_, Garrus thought, before he turned around to see Tali. "Hey there, Tali," he said, surprised, and glancing at his omni-tool. The engineering duo had just logged in, leaving only Kelly, who would be on shortly. "You need something? I'm kind of busy."

He saw her shoulders slump a little. "Sorry to bother you. It's just – never mind."

He set his status to "Busy" and stepped forward to stop her before she could leave. "Hey, hey, it can wait a minute. What's going on?"

She hesitated, then leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest. "Did I make that bad an impression on the crew when I refused to go with Shepard?"

Garrus' mandibles dipped at this. "I don't know. I didn't think so, and I know Shepard was glad to see you. I'm glad you're here, Tali – makes it feel like the old Normandy. Why do you ask?"

Her hands twitched, and she stood up from the doorframe, stalking back and forth in front of it. "I just feel like no one in Engineering wants me there. I mean, I get Jack – she's crazy paranoid, like Veetor only functional. But Donnelly and Daniels have spent the last two hours coming up with less and less plausible suggestions to get me out of there."

He started chuckling. "I know what's going on, and it's not anything you did, Tali." He pulled up the omni-tool display. "It's this game, Kasumi got it, and a bunch of us have been playing it. They just wanted you out of the way because they set it up on their terminals."

She looked at the display, then the set of his mandibles, before whirling with an inarticulate growl and stalking out the door. "Those bosh'tets! Trying to game without me? I'll show them who's the best engineer!"

"No, Tali, wait!" Garrus took a couple of quick steps to catch up to her. "Please don't disable it? I'm sure Kasumi will get you a copy of the game, and then you can join us." She raised her omni-tool, the game already booting up. "Ok, run through the tutorial, then you can join us for the next level."

She turned, eyes glowing behind the face mask, and pushed a finger menacingly into his armored chest. "Trust me, Vakarian, you're going to regret keeping this from me for even a minute." The hand then raised, patted his forehead the way Shepard patted his space hamster, and she continued her stalk towards the elevator.

Feeling intimidated already, he returned to the battery, to find that now everyone was waiting on him. "Just so you know, Tali is on her way down to Engineering with her own copy of the game now," he said into the waiting room.

Curses could be heard in response from Ken and Gabby, then the game went to the loading screen. Garrus, unsurprisingly, was a guard again. This time, the City Watch had raided a thief hideout, killing several and taking several more prisoner. Garrus had a feeling that the thief-hero was getting a briefing that involved freeing his fellow criminals, and went with selecting a crossbow guard again. The mission began, and he found himself pacing a walkway on the roof of the watch headquarters alone. He could see another bow guard walking a different part of the roof on the opposite side of an open courtyard where the prisoners sat, manacled in what appeared to be a sweltering summer night.

The first half an hour went by almost completely uneventfully. He had quickly picked out his landmarks, watching for opened windows or doors and keeping track of the other guards' patrols. It really reminded him of the super boring parts of C-Sec, except he _knew_ that someone was out there gunning for him and that he could shirk his duties without getting in trouble for it.

He stopped on his latest circuit, pausing and frowning as something pinged his subconscious. Mentally, he started checking down his list before realizing that the guard on the opposite roof was now missing. Just in case, he counted to ten, watching from the corner of his eyes as he continued his patrol, but the missing guard did not appear.

His fringe was positively itching with expected nervousness, the feeling he'd heard humans describe as something to do with their neck hair standing up. His ears were aching with the attention he was paying attention to the ambient noise, and more than once he whirled around at a non-existant footstep. Thus, it came as an expected shock when he keeled over from a sudden thump over the head. He watched through the overhead camera as the thief scuttled away, climbing down the side of the courtyard.

Grumbling to himself, he switched to a sword guard inside the station, instantly heading out into the courtyard, poking around and shouting to draw the attention of the VI guards. Fifteen minutes later, he was knocked out again. He switched to a crossbow guard in the street outside, this time managing to catch sight of the thief long enough to fire one shot before taking a moss arrow to the face before being rendered unconscious for a third time.

When the mission at last ended, Garrus was glad to see that his score was not the lowest on the screen, only Jack and Jacob beating him to the bottom, the soldier having been knocked out five times to Garrus' three. Jack had also taken three naps, though she hadn't managed to land a return blow.

To his lack of surprise, Mordin had been playing the thief this time. Garrus shot him a quick message of appreciation, wondering how in the world Kelly had made it the entire mission without being disposed of.

At dinner, he finally got his answer. The food quality was still atrocious, probably because Gardner couldn't taste what he was serving. "I somehow managed to lock myself in a cell," Kelly said, depressed. "I know that smug salarian saw me, because he made a point of using the blackjack to pound on another cell to get my attention."

"Remind me never to piss you off," Jack said, almost respectfully for once.

"By the way, anyone know what happened down there?" Jacob asked. "Shepard came back all depressed, and Miranda was more of an ice queen than usual."

To everyone's surprise, Zaeed paused on his way back to the cargo bay. "Bloody disaster, that's what. Collectors already had half the colony on board. Then to top things off, Kaidan goddamn Alenko shows up and starts tearing Shepard a new one, claiming he's a traitor to the Alliance and similar rot."

"You were paying attention to our whole conversation?" Kelly asked, eyes wide.

"Of course I was. You think I walk in here without knowing every goddamn thing you're saying? Listening skills like that have saved my ass. I remember this one mission," and he droned on. Garrus stared morosely down at his tray of food, attempting to take another bite. It was better than listening to another story from Zaeed Goddamn Massani … but not by much.

Struck by a sudden thought, he watched Kasumi's face. She was obviously showing as much attention to Zaeed as he was, and after a moment, she met his eyes. He wasn't quite as adept at reading human lips, but he was pretty sure she'd just mouthed at him, _Wait until I get my turn_. He held onto his best poker face, which judging from her widening smile, wasn't quite good enough.


	5. Illium Interlude

Eating breakfast in the mess, Garrus looked over at Kasumi as she sat down with a bowl of plain rice, one of the few things Gardner couldn't manage to screw up. "One thing bugs me about the game," he said slowly, picking up a dried cereal bar. "Out of three missions, the thief has died or been caught twice times now. More than likely, unless you're it next, he's going to get caught next up." He crunched a piece noisily between pointed teeth, hating these military rations. At least they were dextro.

"So how does the storyline continue when the hero should be dead?" she finished for him, setting down the bowl. "Once a mission has been beaten on multiplayer, you can go in and solo it, just against computer VI."

"Hmm. I'll have to try that," he started.

"Garrus and Mordin, arm up and meet me at the Mako," Shepard called out from the vicinity of the elevator.

"Later," he finished with a grumble, standing up and taking the dried bar with him.

"I'll take care of the tray," the thief offered. "I heard you're going to go recruit a hanar assassin."

"Not so loud," Garrus started to say, to get interrupted by Zaeed suddenly sliding into his newly-vacated seat.

"Hanar assassin, did you say? That reminds me of this one goddamn mission." Stifling a groan, Garrus rushed for the elevator crunching loudly on his breakfast to drown out the mercenary.

* * *

Four hours later, he gratefully unbuckled his armor in the main battery, leaning the top on the table and examining it. To his surprise, the damage was less severe than he expected. "Huh, I guess hiding in the shadows is more effective than I thought."

"Yeah, I was pretty surprised at that myself," came Shepard's voice from behind him. "Seems like you've been hanging out with Kasumi a lot lately," the Commander said slyly. "Eating breakfast and dinner with her, and I nearly tripped over her on the walkway." He raised an eyebrow. "Looking to improve human-turian relations?"

Garrus had to stifle a sudden coughing fit. "I honestly don't know what you mean by that. Or want to. No, she's challenged me to a game, sort of." He shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant. "I'm doing ok so far. But I've picked up a few things from it."

Shepard clapped him on the shoulder. "Keep it up, then. Let me know if you win," he said, turning for the door. "I'll be going over reports with Miranda."

He let out a sigh of relief when the door closed, only to be knocked to the floor by a foot-sweep from Kasumi. "You told him?" she challenged.

"He already knew something was going on!" the turian protested. "Would you rather he think you're interested in sleeping with me? Or vice versa?"

She stared at him for a moment. "Well," she trailed off playfully.

"Oh spirits," he groaned, covering his eyes with a forearm.

"Relax, I'm just teasing you. No offense, but the thought of those talons and teeth anywhere near my," she stopped. "Let's just leave that there."

"Please," he said, trying to hide his embarrassment as he got back to his feet. "Are we doing another level?"

She shook her head. "Mordin wanted to get some shopping done while we're still on Illium, so did Jacob. It'll give you a chance to go through all three levels on your own and catch up on the story." She grinned at him as she slipped back to the door. "The next level should be quite interesting, though," she taunted, vanishing under her cloak again and leaving the battery.

He heaved out a large sigh, and slipped down towards the forward end of the battery, where at least it would be harder for anyone to sneak up on him. The first mission was fairly straightforward, stealing a bunch of expensive and lightweight trade goods to move his child apprentices to a safer place, and he made it through with no damage taken and 95% loot. _Not too shabby_, he thought. He'd done the art house mission.

The prison break one made him pay slightly closer attention. _The fence I sell those creepy statues to is promptly nabbed, right after they raid where the kids were. Sounds like someone planted a tracking device on one of them_, he thought, as he released several known criminals and proceeded to render unconscious three dozen police officers. Just for laughs, he pictured all of them as various rule-bound people he hated in C-Sec, then spent an extra twenty minutes moving all of them down to the cells and piling them inside.

At dinner, Jacob and the engineering duo were absent. "They decided to also do some shopping, and I don't think Taylor has come back yet," Tali told him. At least the food was decent, compared to normal. "Tomorrow, apparently Shepard is getting some asari warrior to join us."

"Did he say who's going with him?" Garrus asked.

"He's going to take Miranda and the new guy, Thane," Kelly chirped in. "Give him a chance to see the drell in action, as it were."

"Good, then we have a chance to do the next level while they're gone," Kasumi said. "Everyone caught up and ready?" A round of nods went around the table. "0900 then, after they leave."


	6. It's Zombie Time!

After breakfast, everyone was sitting around in the mess area, talking or browsing the extra-net. Shepard spent most of the morning sitting with Miranda, Thane, and Garrus, introducing the drell (his first thought on seeing the assassin had been _Thank the spirits it's not an _actual_ hanar_) to his most trusted people on board. Then their fearless leader, his biotic bombshell, and the new guy, departed.

Two minutes after the elevator closed, EDI's hologram popped up. "Commander Shepard has left the ship." In half a second, every single gamer was out of their seats, moving for the doors.

"I am going to destroy you," Jack threatened, shoving past Kelly and Jacob into the elevators.

"Human expression: Bring it on," Mordin retorted. The rest of the trash talking faded away as he closed the door to the battery, and feeling paranoid, he did a quick sweep before logging in to the game, watching as names clicked on one at a time. Within five minutes, they were all logged in and ready, and to his complete lack of surprise, Garrus was in the guard contingent again.

Only this time, he wasn't the guard. The briefing was, instead, a quick primer on the walking dead, the corpses visible in the opening video animation. To his surprise, there were, like the guards, three types, but unlike the guards, it was much harder to put down a zombie for good.

He started off in one of the plain zombies, shambling around the streets. The only thing that really bothered him was how slow he had to walk, an awkward shuffle that was borderline nausea-inducing. His speed certainly meant he wouldn't be traversing the entire neighborhood, so he'd have to settle for this small area.

As he was thinking of how to get the best viewpoint, his health status suddenly flipped from a full gray bar to empty, and he watched the camera view as the zombie body slumped to the ground, the thief rapidly escaping before he could get back up again. _Interesting_, he thought, _we're only five minutes into the game. So, his escape point should be back this way._

He waited a full minute until he could stand back up, and then proceeded to quarter the neighborhood, waking up every VI-controlled zombie, and leading them back to the main street. It also had the benefit of leading him past what he thought was the exit point.

It took him nearly an hour of corralling before he had the zombies arranged how he wanted them, and tucked his zombie into a nice, dark corner, along a route almost perfectly designed for a thief to avoid the crowd of hungry undead lining the street.

And to his utter frustration, the game ended not two minutes later, with the message, _Mission Failed._ Thirty seconds later, he watched the camera view of one of the wraith-like undead, hurling a ball of dark energy at an unsuspecting thief perched on the roof beam of a ruined building, and watching it knock him falling four stories to the stone street. _Ouch_, he thought with a wince.

"This hasn't happened before," Kasumi said through the group channel when they all sat back on the loading screen. "Give me a minute to look through the manual."

"I'd like to know who thought it was funny to shoot me in the ass," came Tali's perturbed voice, and Garrus had to fight hard to smother his laughter. Didn't want to give her the wrong impression, after all.

"Easier to aim than sniper rifle. Better range, no ballistic curve," Mordin said, somewhat smugly. "Still wondering how walking dead can _drown_."

"Wait, you did?" Jack said. "I watched that happen! Nearly fell off a balcony I was laughing so hard."

"Glad I could provide additional entertainment value," the salarian acknowledged.

"Alright, we have to do the mission over," Kasumi said a moment later. "Different pick for thief, same scenario. She didn't complete enough of the objectives to continue."

"I have to be a walking corpse now?" Tali lamented.

"It's not that bad. Unless your omni-tool has olfactory cue generators," Garrus snarked.

The game started again, and though he was in a different zombie body, he was still in the same rough neighborhood. Close enough to watch the new thief go leaping past from roof to roof with the aid of a rope arrow zipline.

Again, he set up a road maze of zombies as soon as the thief was out of sight, and since he'd taken the zipline, he probably wouldn't be going back that way, but just in case he managed to lead one zombie up onto an open patio rooftop.

This time, the game didn't end as soon as he got into hiding, and then it was the long, boring waiting game. Somewhere just over half an hour later, he twitched the controls as the thief stepped into his pool of shadow, and five seconds later, it was all over.

The scores this time were far more heavily in favor of the thief, who managed not to be hit before stumbling into Garrus' well-planned ambush, as well as taking down every single wraith and haunt in the level. Back at the waiting screen, Garrus shook his head. "I want to solo this mission, keep up with the storyline before the next level."

"Me too," Kelly said. "Besides, Jacob just quit out. I think he's mad at Garrus."

"Turnabout is fair play," the turian said smugly. "He killed me the same way, only I strategically set up the battlefield first."

"Next level later, I want to get off this ship and get some real food," Gabby said.

"Hear hear!" Ken supported.

"That sounds fine with me. Tonight, mission allowing?" The engineering duo had logged off before she even asked the question. "I guess that's a yes," Kasumi chuckled as Mordin followed their lead.

"Works for me," Garrus said. He hesitated for a moment, then turned off the game as well. He could still play the game later, after all, but if he had to subsist another day on Gardner's horrid excuse for cooking, his stomach might attempt to commit suicide for him.


	7. Walk in the Woods

_Author's Note: So, I was thinking about writing out the storyline of Thief: Reliquary once I finish with GvG. If my fans are interested in such an idea, let me know via review. Because reviews are awesome, and reviews with substance are more awesome._

* * *

They were away from Illium, and in orbit around Tuchanka. Mordin had rescued some assistant of his, and currently Shepard was trying, with Samara's help, to assist Grunt in some damn fool rite of passage.

Naturally, since this left their entire gaming group on board, they were all deeply engrossed in the game. Garrus grinned as he dodged the last zombie and reached the escape point. He still didn't know what the point was of retrieving some ancient book of magic that no one could use, from the middle of a zombie-infested portion of the city, but he completed it and picked up a couple of thousand credits in gold and gems.

Logging into the lobby, he saw they were only waiting on Kelly. "Where is Kelly, anyway?" he mused out loud.

To his surprise, EDI's floating ball hologram popped up at the station behind him. "Yeoman Chambers is currently in the life support room with Thane."

"Huh." It did make sense that she'd spend some time talking with their second-newest crew member. "I just hope she hurries up, before Jack gets impatient."

"I estimate it will take her three point two minutes to finish dressing and move up to her station." It took several seconds for this to sink in. _Getting dressed means she was undressed, and I know enough about human customs to know they're usually only undressed to sleep, shower, and have sex, which means she and Thane? Oh spirits, now I realize what all those veiled comments were for when _I _came on board, and why Shepard thinks Kasumi and I_…

He groaned out loud, hitting his forehead against the console. "Is something wrong, Agent Vakarian?" EDI asked.

"I don't want to talk about it. Spirits, I don't want to _think_ about it," he muttered, opening his eyes when the game chimed at him they were all present. "Please let me get into the game now."

The hologram blinked out, and a few moments later, the game started broadcasting to his visor. There was a quick, maybe fifteen second video of someone holding an animal down and slitting its throat, the plants beneath consuming the blood to grow at obscene speed, and then the sigil that was supposed to stand for the nature-worshipping faction with the broken speech.

Garrus watched with growing curiosity as it explained how the Pagans had found some kind of relic belonging to a fallen civilization, in a set of caves below their hideout in the woods. They were guarding it to wait for the full moon so that they could destroy it and feed its power to their dark nature god. _Huh, that's … kind of cool, actually_, he thought.

To his surprise, he was placed in the starting body of one of the Pagan shamans, and quickly checked the various spell-abilities he could use. _Ranged attack burst, explosive burst – so, a grenade, tangle capture. I can work with this._ He was also underground, in the first part of the caves. The walls here were mostly natural, save for one of rough bricks and an ill-fitting door, set up to allow for privacy.

He strode out quickly, familiarizing himself with the caves. There were three different entrances, two of them already being guarded by pairs of sword-wielding beastmen. The deeper he went, the less they seemed like caves, and more like buildings that had been buried and left to rot.

His exploration had taken the better part of half an hour, so he rushed back to the third entrance, shooting off occasional bursts of searing light, just in case. No one had apparently snuck through, and he picked a hiding spot with decent visibility to watch the entrance.

Another twenty minutes went past, and without warning a deep bass alarm started hooting from deep within the caves. _Huh, I didn't know it did that_, he thought, turning to rush backwards. All of the guards in the caves were rushing to the source of the noise, so Garrus deliberately slowed his pace, watching the gaps by the roofs and the shadowed nooks of half-filled buildings.

As he expected, the thief had hidden while most of the guards ran past, and almost got past Garrus as well, only a brief flash of movement at the top of the 'screen' catching his eye. He whirled around, firing off the tangle capture, nailing the thief mid-air and sending him tumbling to the ground a fair distance away down the corridor. "Now I've got you," he had his avatar say, just to taunt them, and stepped forward.

His screen exploded, and his priest dropped to the ground, dead. "What was that?" he ranted, and hit the replay to see him step on a mine the thief had dropped the moment they went over his head. Before he could respawn, the game ended, another guard coming even further behind Garrus killing the thief before he could get free of the entanglement.

They met in the mess hall for lunch, Shepard and Grunt still down on the surface after killing a thresher maw. "Who was playing the priest?" Kasumi asked.

"Er, I was," Garrus reluctantly admitted.

"And who was playing the guard?" Tali raised her hand, causing both of them to look at her in surprise. "You were? Really?"

"Kasumi, you've never been on a combat mission with me," the quarian explained blandly. "Just because I use a shotgun doesn't mean I'm some uncultured brute." She sniffed in dismissal. "I saw the priest hanging back from the pack, figured he was expecting the thief to sneak past the crowd of idiots," at which Jacob, Jack, and Donnelly all glowered at her, "and did the same thing to him."

At which point, Kasumi turned back to glare at Garrus. "Which bring me back to you. How'd you know to catch me like that?"

"I didn't, actually," he muttered, his mandibles spreading in embarrassment as he opened his pre-packaged turian meal. It smelled … not delightful, but better than Gardner's cooking. "I meant to throw the explosive blast at you and hit tangle by mistake." Mordin started smirking as the thief's scowl grew even darker.

"You took out the sneak thief by _accident_?" Jack chortled.

"If you notice the scores, Tali beat me, she actually got the kill," he protested. "I just … assisted."

"Nobody else even saw me the entire mission!" Kasumi fumed. "And then you had to go and get _lucky_!"

"I bet he'd like to get lucky," Jacob muttered, just loudly enough to be overheard. This prompted all the rest of the humans at the table to turn various shades of red and start chuckling, and he hid his face in his hands. "That wasn't meant to be out loud."

"Mister Taylor," Kasumi said silkily, "I hope you end up as the thief again. Because when you do, your ass is mine." She rose from the table, deliberately putting as extra sway in her steps as she walked away, and Garrus couldn't help watching it despite Kelly's knowing smirk as she watched him and Kasumi's ass in equal measure.


End file.
